'Politically Correct' BBC Censors Fawlty Towers

[Teddy Bear]

Judging by the output of today's BBC one would know anyway that they lost the ability to know what creativity and humour is. The following story provides an insight into one of the reasons the Ministry of Truth has lost the way in their attempt to control the way people should think and act to be what they see as politically correct.

After editing out some very funny lines from a scene in Fawlty Towers 'Germans' episode, the BBC justifies it by saying it was edited to suit a family audience to reflect changing attitudes.

It doesn't reflect changing attitudes, it does however reflect the BBC desire to change attitudes. They should be more concerned about not broadcasting programmes that have any reference to the likes of Jimmy Savile, or any others who have been accused fairly conclusively of abuse.

Otherwise the public really does know how to relate to racist humour that is meant to be scoffed at without protection by the BBC. It is actually an insult to our intelligence. They have their heads so far up their backsides on this subject with the worst example that they cannot refer to a Muslim terrorist as such, preferring instead to call them a militant.

Disgraceful!

Don't mention the ***: Censorship row as BBC cuts the Major's 'racist' lines from classic Fawlty Towers episode

• Viewers complain that only the 'terminally thin-skinned' could be offended by the character
  
• BBC said it was edited to suit a family audience to reflect changing attitudes

By Laura Cox

It is the episode of Fawlty Towers best remembered for the line ‘Don’t mention the war’ and John Cleese’s silly walk when impersonating Hitler.

The references have proved controversial before, but when The Germans was repeated on BBC2 on Sunday evening it wasn’t our European neighbours that the corporation was worried about offending.

Instead, the episode was edited to omit racist language – only for some viewers to then complain that the BBC was ‘airbrushing history’.

In one scene one of the hotel’s permanent residents, Major Gowen, uses derogatory terms to describe black people. It was included in the episode’s first airing in October 1975, but this time around the major’s words were edited out.

The scene involves Basil Fawlty and the major, played by actor Ballard Berkeley, exchanging their normal pleasantries before the conversation moves on to Basil’s wife Sybil and women in general.

The major tells Fawlty about the time he took a woman to see India play cricket at the Oval. He then says: ‘The strange thing was, throughout the morning she kept referring to the Indians as niggers. “No, no, no,” I said, “the niggers are the West Indians. These people are wogs”.’


Ballard Berkeley as the Major Gowen, who makes the offensive remark. Viewers said that the 'bigoted character' was meant to be laughed at - not with

Several years ago there were concerns that the episode would never be shown again because of the offensive words. However, recent editions of The Complete Fawlty Towers DVD, distributed by BBC Worldwide, have not been edited and included the segment that was cut by the BBC on Sunday.

Some fans took to the BBC’s Points Of View message board yesterday to say they ‘despaired’ at the ‘unnecessary’ editing.

One wrote: ‘You can’t airbrush history away and I doubt if anyone but the terminally thin-skinned could be offended by the major, a character we’re clearly supposed to laugh at rather than with.’

Another posted: ‘The point is that the major is a racist old bigot, incongruous with modern society – even in the Seventies. The audience isn’t supposed to agree with him, they’re supposed to laugh at him. The whole episode is about xenophobia in various forms – it’s social satire. I instinctively dislike the airbrushing of history.’

A third viewer wrote: ‘So how sad BBC you have finally succumbed and lost the guts to transmit the episode of Fawlty Towers “The Germans” in its original form. The major’s speech of his experience of going out with a woman to the Oval is one of the funniest things ever.

‘You edited it because it includes the W-word and the N-word. Let’s face it, the whole episode and much of Fawlty Towers is racist by today’s standards and misogynistic, but above all it is hilarious.

‘We are all grown up, you know. We, the vast majority of us, can laugh at this without being racists.

‘It’s about time you grew up BBC, and trusted your audience. We know what is acceptable and what is not and what is funny and why, and the fact it is of a time which is now long past. We understand context, the major is a figure of fun, he doesn’t whip up hatred.’

Fawlty Towers was written by and starred Cleese and his then wife Connie Booth. The Germans was the sixth episode of the 12 that were made and was voted number 11 in Channel 4’s One Hundred Greatest TV Moments in 1999.

The series has continued to entertain families since being made in the 1970s and was in 2000 voted by industry professionals to be the best British series of all time.

A BBC spokesman said: ‘We are very proud of Fawlty Towers and its contribution to British television comedy.

‘But public attitudes have changed significantly since it was made and it was decided to make some minor changes, with the consent of John Cleese’s management, to allow the episode to transmit to a family audience at 7.30pm on BBC2.’

[Teddy Bear]

Good article by Christopher Stevens at the Daily Mail examining the ridiculous censoring of this Fawlty Towers episode, and others.

Censoring Fawlty's gags makes the Beeb look more bonkers than Basil

By Christopher Stevens

For many sitcom fans, ‘The Germans’ is simply the funniest half-hour ever broadcast — that episode of Fawlty Towers with the moose head, the fire drill, and John Cleese as the deranged hotelier Basil, goose-stepping and Sieg Heiling in front of a table of aghast German guests.

But for the BBC, apparently, it’s a source of embarrassment. When the 1975 show was repeated on BBC2 last Sunday, a segment was edited to remove racist language. Comic perfection it may be, but it seems the episode can no longer be screened uncensored.

The offending scene, featuring alcoholic old duffer Major Gowen (played by the elderly character actor Ballard Berkeley), wasn’t crucial to the plot. But it was vital to the episode’s theme — how Britain couldn’t shake off its distrust of other nations.



Censoring: For many fans, 'The Germans' episode of Fawlty Towers is one of the funniest episodes. But when the show was repeated on BBC2 last Sunday, a segment was edited to remove racist language

In the 60-second clip arbitrarily cut by Auntie on Sunday, the Major ambles across to the reception desk of Basil’s shabby, family-run hotel in Torquay and begins reminiscing about a girl he once took to the Oval cricket ground to see England play India, before the war.

‘Strange thing,’ the Major burbles, ‘was that throughout the morning she kept referring to the Indians as niggers. “No, no, no, no, no,” I said. “Niggers are the West Indians. These people are wogs.” I do wish I could remember her name . . . she’s still got my wallet.’

No one could mistake Basil Fawlty for a sensitive soul, but he’s clearly uneasy at this blatant racism, and steers the conversation away. By the end of the day, though, he perpetrates far greater offences himself.

Unable to stop referring to Nazis and the war, he reduces one German visitor to floods of tears by impersonating Hitler, and blames his guests for the debacle — ‘You started it,’ he screeches. ‘Yes you did . . . you invaded Poland!’

This is farce doubling as satire. Cleese knew exactly the sort of Little Englander he wanted to send up when he created the series. Basil was based on a former naval commander named Donald Sinclair, who, with his formidable wife Betty, ran the Gleneagles hotel in Torquay.

The comedian stayed there in 1970 while filming Monty Python and was mesmerised by Sinclair’s rudeness and bigoted attitudes. The hotel-keeper was notorious for his aggression and eccentricities — he once threw a party of guests out of the lounge for trying to order sandwiches.

He was the type who would fume, ‘I fought a war for the likes of you!’ whenever he felt the world hadn’t shown him enough respect.

Fawlty Towers is full-volume comedy. You can’t miss the jokes, they’re bellowed in your face. And the biggest joke is Basil, Cleese’s version of Donald Sinclair.

We sympathise with Basil; we even hope he will occasionally come off best in his running battles with his snobbish, hen-pecking wife Sybil (portrayed beautifully by Prunella Scales). But we never admire him. He’s a figure of fun, not a role model.

We can see, too, that the Major is a senile version of Basil, a generation older and pickled in gin — stranded not in the Battle of Britain but in the Boer War.

To take offence at anything these characters say is bizarre.

The BBC argues that in censoring the episode it was considering a family audience at 7.30pm. It’s not considerate, it’s overbearing control-freakery.

At most, all that was needed was a word of guidance to viewers before it went out: ‘This is vintage comedy from the Seventies.

‘Attitudes to racist words were different then; some people might find certain phrases offensive.’

That’s enough to let people make up their own minds if they’re worried about children and maiden aunts. Paying the licence fee ought to give us the right to decide for ourselves about Britain’s classic comedy — not to be mollycoddled by programmers.

Will Andrew Sachs’ Spanish waiter, Manuel (‘Don’t mind him, he’s from Barcelona’) be the next airbrushed out of the show in case it offends Spain? Will Dad’s Army be bleeped every time Corporal Jones declares the fuzzie-wuzzies don’t like it up ’em?

Sadly, though, this isn’t the first time BBC eagerness to censor its past output has robbed us of brilliant comedy. The Goodies — the most successful laughter series of the Seventies and a show that drew ratings-busting audiences — is simply never repeated.

BBC executives have always refused to explain why they have locked away this surreal and often breathtakingly funny show. But censorship is widely seen as one of the reasons.

The Goodies was first shown in 1970, when programmers saw The Black And White Minstrel Show — where white men blacked up their faces and sang close-harmony ballads in zip-a-dee-doo-dah accents — as clean-cut family fun for primetime Saturday night TV.

Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden and Bill Oddie, stars and writers of The Goodies, saw the ludicrous side . . . and sent it up rotten. The opening credits of several Goodies series even featured Garden stripped to his shorts, hair in an afro wig and his face and body smeared black as tar.
No one was outraged, of course. Those were different times.

Today, the three Goodies are all highly respected comedy veterans; they wouldn’t dream of shooting similar scenes now, but nor are they ashamed: on the contrary, they are proud of their satire’s contemporary courage.

In one 1974 episode, they poked fun so mercilessly at the apartheid regime in South Africa that the BBC demanded cuts.

‘They said it was unfair to the South African police, who we were a bit critical of,’ Garden said.
The storyline saw Bill Oddie as a servant called Mbopo. His accent was a wild parody of a Deep South slave — ‘Tank you boss for dat mos’ agreeable kick on de bum!’

The show had 11 million viewers — at 7pm on a Monday. It deserves to be hailed as an early example of the anti-apartheid movement in Britain, more than 15 years before Nelson Mandela was freed from prison. Instead, it seems unlikely the BBC will ever screen it again.

Another scathing satire on racism has also been quietly dropped from the repeat schedules, though its central character was once a byword in Britain.

In Till Death Us Do Part, Alf Garnett was a blinkered, ranting, bigoted misogynist. He was also a patriot, and a loving family man at heart.

The contradictions made him just about bearable, but never likeable. Played with goggle-eyed spluttering gusto by Warren Mitchell, he held up a mirror to the worst of British behaviour.

The language was intemperate, to say the least. Here he is, longing for England to be a world power again: ‘We will rise like lions and get our great British Empire back, that your bloody Labour rubbish gave away to a load of bloody coons and wogs! Who made such a muck up of it they’ve had to come over here and scrounge off of us!’

And here’s Alf’s definition of Scousers: ‘Up in Liverpool, they’re all red-faced Micks. A bloody Irish colony up there, innit, bloody Paddies, they’re worse than the Pakistanis, they are. Bloody lazy sods.’

Writer Johnny Speight didn’t just risk offending millions with that character — he also faced the danger that people could actually agree with Alf. As a grammar school pupil, I remember one master telling us: ‘Listen to Alf Garnett, boys — he’s the only man who dares tell the truth in this country!’

Even at 14, most of us knew Alf was pathetic — and the teacher had revealed himself as an idiot.
Speight trusted his audience to appreciate the satire. If the comedy was offensive, it was because the reality was so much worse.

Pubs, football stadiums and factories were full of men who did talk like Alf. Laughing at them was the best and bravest thing to do.

There are no Boer War veterans left today. Men like Major Gowen are a long-vanished breed.

But if we let the BBC wield the censor’s scissors whenever they like, they will get away with being as imperious, bossy and bullying as Sybil Fawlty herself . . . while we are cringeing and fawning like her hapless husband.

‘BA-SIIIIL!!!!’

[Teddy Bear]

Richard Littlejohn gives a very funny rendition of how he sees the BBC would like to rewrite the Fawlty Towers episode if they could.

Spot On!

I say, Fawlty, there are men wearing frocks in the cocktail bar

By Richard Littlejohn

The BBC censored a recent repeat of the classic Fawlty Towers episode ‘The Germans’ on the grounds that some of the 1970s dialogue would be considered offensive to a modern audience. This got me wondering what Fawlty Towers would be like if the BBC recommissioned it under present-day diversity and equality guidelines . . .

Fawlty: Morning, Major.

Major: Papers here yet, Fawlty?

Fawlty: Absolutely, Major. Ever since that wonderful Indian family took over the newsagents they’re on the doorstep at 5am prompt, rain or shine. They can teach us bone-idle British a thing or two, eh?

Major: Indian, you say? I knew a girl once. I must have been keen on her because I took her to see India.

Fawlty: At the Oval?
The famous episode of Fawlty Towers, 'The Germans', was edited by the BBC when it was recently repeated

The famous episode of Fawlty Towers, 'The Germans', was edited by the BBC when it was recently repeated

Major: No, India. Wonderful country, charming people. Industrious, honest as the day is long, marvellous cooks. More billionaires than you can shake a stick at. Got their own space programme, too.

Fawlty: Jewel in the Crown, Major. I’m thinking of turning Fawlty Towers into a sort of Best Exotic Marigold Hotel in reverse, somewhere sophisticated Indians can come to relax on the English Riviera.

Major: Didn’t think you could stand foreigners, Fawlty.

Fawlty: Au contraire, Major. Can’t get enough of them. A few Indian billionaires might raise the tone of this place, not like the usual riff-raff we get in here.

Major: Riff-raff?

Fawlty: Torbay Conservative Association; Women’s Institute; Countryside Alliance . . .

Major: Remember when we had Mrs Thatcher down here to address the Conservative Association dinner?

Fawlty: Don’t mention that scabby old bat to me. Damage she did to Britain. My heart still bleeds for the miners. She was completely mad, you know. Complained about the view from her room.

Major: The view?

Fawlty: What do you expect to see from a Torquay Hotel window: Sydney Opera House? The Hanging Gardens of Babylon? Herds of wildebeest sweeping majestically . . ? No, she said, I expect to see British fishing boats, catching British fish in British waters, not a flotilla of Spanish factory ships. If it’s British ships you want to see, I said, you’d better book into a hotel in the bloody Malvinas, you fascist, imperialist cow.
A British classic: The hit comedy stars John Cleese as Basil Fawlty and Andrew Sachs as Manuel the waiter

A British classic: The hit comedy stars John Cleese as Basil Fawlty and Andrew Sachs as Manuel the waiter
Censored: 'The Germans' is deemed by many fans of Fawlty Towers as one of the funniest episodes ever made

Censored: 'The Germans' is deemed by many fans of Fawlty Towers as one of the funniest episodes ever made

Major: Malvinas? In Worcestershire?

Fawlty: No, Major. That’s what our Argentinian cousins call the Falkland Islands. We should hand them over tomorrow, if you ask me. I don’t know what we’re doing in the South Atlantic, or Afghanistan for that matter.

Major: But I thought you were a fan of Mrs Thatcher, Fawlty. You used to have a picture of her in reception, next to the moose’s head.

Fawlty: That was Sybil’s idea, Major. Worshipped the woman, God knows why . . .

(Enter Sybil through the front door)

Sybil: Baaa-zzzilll!

Fawlty: Hello, my little Iron Lady. We were just . . .

Sybil: Why are all those caravans cluttering up the car park, Basil?

Fawlty: I’m glad you asked that, dear. I’ve agreed that the travelling community can use the car park as a temporary campsite until they can find an alternative to Dale Farm.
Success story: John Cleese and Connie Booth both starred in and co-wrote the iconic sitcom

Success story: John Cleese and Connie Booth both starred in and co-wrote the iconic sitcom

Sybil: I want them gone now, Basil. There’s nowhere for the guests to park.

Fawlty: But we can’t evict them. They are a vulnerable minority who suffer terrible discrimination and deprivation. And anyway, they’ve agreed to Tarmac the drive for nothing.

Sybil: Mr O’Reilly was supposed to have Tarmacked the drive weeks ago, Basil. Why didn’t you use those nice Polish builders? What’s he been doing?

Fawlty: He’s been refurbishing the multi-faith prayer room, dear. We’ve got a group from Finsbury Park Mosque arriving at the weekend and they want the all-you-can-eat halal buffet facing Mecca.

Sybil: And I thought I told you to ring the council and get them to empty the dustbins. They haven’t been round for weeks.

Fawlty: It’s not their fault, Sybil, it’s the savage cuts being imposed on local councils by the Bullingdon Club Coalition Government.

Sybil: I’ll be imposing some savage cuts on you, Basil, if those dustbins aren’t emptied by tonight. We’ve got a gay wedding reception tomorrow and I don’t want a repeat of that business with the rat.

(Phone rings)

Sybil: Fawlty Towers reception, how can I help you? Of course, Mr Jackson, right away. I’ll get my husband to attend to it immediately. Basil, the American couple in Room 109 are still having problems with the air conditioning.

Fawlty: Pah! Typical Americans. Look, whatever you do, don’t mention the illegal war in Iraq. I mentioned it once, but I think I got away with it. Still, that’s Republicans for you.

Sybil: Basil, I don’t think they are Republicans. They’re African-Americans, from the Martin Luther King Foundation, over here for a conference on reparations for slavery.

Fawlty: Oh, African-Americans. Why didn’t you say so? I’ll get straight on to it, my Little Englander.

Sybil: You are a pathetic specimen, Basil. And when you’ve done that, I want you to get on to Mr Clegg about his Britain In Europe meeting in the Mandelson Suite. Tell him the room has been closed for fumigation and won’t be available again until 2017. And then ring Mr Farage at the Red Lion and tell him the same thing.

(Exit Sybil)

Major: Does that mean the UKIP dinner is off tonight, Fawlty?

Fawlty: ‘Fraid so, Major. Don’t tell Sybil, but I’ve already called Farage and refunded his deposit. Whatever you think of that privileged Etonian toff Cameron, he was right about UKIP. Bunch of fruit-cakes, loonies and closet racists in blazers.

Major: Blazers?

Fawlty: Yes, Major, blazers. I’ve been meaning to have a word with you about our new dress code.

Major: Dress code? Don’t tell me you’re lifting the ban on ladies wearing trousers in the cocktail bar?

Fawlty: No, I’m lifting the ban on men wearing dresses in the cocktail bar. Fawlty Towers is becoming Torquay’s first Trans-Friendly hotel.

Major: Trans-what, Fawlty?

Fawlty: Transgendered, transsexual, transvestite . . .

Major: Oh, I see. Ladyboys! When I was in Brazil . . .

Fawlty: Keep your voice down, Major. We’ve got the local LGBT committee having lunch in the Burchill Room today. Chef’s running them up a nice Waldorf Salad.

Major: Where’s Manuel, Fawlty? Haven’t seen him for ages.

Fawlty: He’s gone back to Barcelona. Never got over that business with his granddaughter.

Major: What business?

Fawlty: That phone call from Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross.

Major: Oh, yes. I read about it. Shocking, quite shocking. Now I remember what I came down here for. Papers here yet, Fawlty?

Fawlty: Just the Guardian, Major.

[Teddy Bear]

Another Telegraph journalist gives his views on this censoring, and I believe does a good job.

Why can't we laugh at the old jokes any more?
A 'racist' joke in Fawlty Towers has been cut because it might offend. Well, it might - if you didn’t get the joke

By Michael Deacon

Strange place, the past. It appears to have been full of people who had next to no understanding of 21st-century mores. For some reason, they all seem to have carried on as if it didn’t remotely matter how their 20th-century attitudes and language would be judged by us, their descendants and superiors, in 2013.

This week the BBC was confronted with this problem when airing a repeat of Fawlty Towers. The episode had a scene with the words “wogs” and “niggers” in it. The old major, played by Ballard Berkeley, is explaining the difference between the two. The line gets a big laugh from the studio audience. Or it used to. This time, the BBC cut the line out.

The reason given was that it contained language that might offend. Well, I’m sure it might, if you didn’t get the joke. The joke's on the major. At first it looks as if he’s about to scold someone for being racist – but then he turns out to be racist himself. So we laugh at him. The joke’s actually quite PC.

But still it was cut, because these are words the BBC now feels uncomfortable airing, certainly at 7.30pm. It’s happened before. In 2007, a joke about gay men being sticklers for cleanliness was removed from a repeat of Porridge. It makes you wonder what’s next for the cutting-room floor.

Take Monty Python’s Life of Brian. In 1979, Life of Brian was thought shocking because it mocked man’s weakness for superstition and doctrine. Today, I suspect a broadcaster would be more shocked by the scene in which a male character is ridiculed for his desire to change sex. “I want to be a woman,” he says. “From now on, I want you to call me Loretta… It’s my right as a man… I want to have babies… It’s every man’s right to have babies if he wants them… Don’t you oppress me…” Plainly, we’re meant to find him absurd, and to agree with the male colleague who grumbles about the man’s “struggle against reality”. (“What’s the point of fighting for his right to have babies when he can’t have babies?”)

Given the outrage this month when the columnist Suzanne Moore joked about transsexuals – and the even noisier outrage when another columnist, Julie Burchill, used the phrase “chicks with d----” – I doubt such a scene could be written today. Lynne Featherstone, a Lib Dem minister, demanded that Burchill and her editor be sacked. What would she do with John Cleese? Hang him by his tonsils from Tower Bridge?

Soon, we’ll start to find Nineties comedy failing the 21st-century rectitude test. For some, this process has already begun.

Last year, Word magazine ran an article claiming that the “Scorchio!” sketches in The Fast Show – first broadcast in 1994 – were xenophobic. “Humour born of bored English comedians sat in luxurious holiday villas,” it growled. “Greek, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish people all sound the same! How hilarious.” Maybe if the BBC repeats The Fast Show it could edit those sketches out. I’m pretty sure the Ralph & Ted ones were OK. Hang on, though – the joke is that a man has an unspoken crush on another man. Is that homophobic? Oh dear. Future generations are going to be very cross with us.

Lines like the major’s in Fawlty Towers might not be very nice. None the less, this is how a lot of people used to talk (it’s how quite a few people still do talk), and it’s not much use pretending it isn’t. Because that’s what this type of editing is: a pretence.

George Orwell, incidentally, used to write disparagingly of “the pansy Left”. He was, by 2013 standards, homophobic. Should publishers erase his prejudice from his essays? Or would that be a little, well, Orwellian?